Part Two of my tell-all series of blog posts about the website redesign project for IMS President Kyle Krull’s law firm. (You can read Part One here: How Good Websites Go Bad)
Kyle’s “old” site was launched in June of 2013. It incorporated everything that was true at the time about online marketing. And it worked very well.
But the pace of change on the internet is rapid and lots of things have changed since 2013. In fact, so many important things have changed so dramatically that we knew Kyle’s website needed a complete overhaul if it were to continue to perform at a “rock star” level.
For instance:
In 2013 |
In 2015 |
Consumers used Google search primarily to gather information, so Kyle’s website offered lots of education about estate planning, including free downloadable reports. |
More website visitors are more ready to make a buying decision. They don’t want to sift through pages and pages of information. Instead, they want to find key information about you, they want to verify that information through social media and in online reviews, and they are ready to schedule an appointment. Kyle’s new website makes it very easy for visitors to do this. |
Paid ads on search got lower click-through rates than organic listings, so we focused on getting Kyle’s website listed on Google’s page one organically. |
Consumers show they are much more willing to click on those paid ads and in fact, consumers who are ready to purchase prefer clicking on a paid ad because these clicks usually avoid all of the “information” pages of a website and take users directly to the pay-off pages where they can request a consultation. |
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms favored larger sites with more keyword-rich content, so we built out an expansive website and made sure every new blog post or update was indexed with his site. |
SEO algorithms still evaluate the quality of content on a website, but they also include other important factors such as social authority and “user experience,” as measured by time-on-site, bounce rates and conversions. Kyle’s new site is carefully designed to engage visitors immediately, keep them on the site and lead them to convert. |
Mobile optimization was an emerging trend (but less than one percent of visitors to Kyle’s site accessed it from a mobile device). |
You heard about Mobilegeddon, right? Google now insists that your website be optimized for mobile devices. Kyle’s new site design is “responsive,” which means it automatically resizes for optimal display on any device, whether desktop, tablet, or any size cell phone. |
Things certainly have changed in just two short years!
There’s an old saying that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Let me just be clear, to avoid any misunderstandings: This does not apply to your digital marketing.
Do NOT wait until your digital marketing is “broke” to make changes.
Why not? Waiting is too expensive.
If you’re thinking you will save money by postponing your website redesign for six months or a year (or more), then you need to think again. Every day that your digital marketing under-performs, you are losing money, and probably more than you think.
Kyle’s website generates two to three inquiries per day, or almost 100 inquiries every month. Of course, not all of those inquiries result in new clients, but a good portion of them do. For the sake of argument, let’s say Kyle closes only 25 percent of those 100 inquiries and he gets even a very low average fee of only $1,000 per case. That means his well-performing site is driving $25,000 in new business to the firm every month … or about $300,000 a year.
Now, let’s say his marketing performance does not crash, but just starts to taper off. He goes from having a rock star program generating 100 inquiries every month to a mediocre program that generates 60 inquiries per month. Apply the same 25 percent closing ratio at the same $1,000 per case and you drop from $25,000 a month to $15,000 a month … or from $300,000 a year to only $180,000.
Now, a digital marketing program that generates $180,000 a year is a good program.
But seriously, would you pay more than $120,000 for a website redesign?
That’s the cost of waiting 12 months to “fix” something that isn’t really “broke” yet.